Maintenance Costs

If you own multiple properties understand and schedule the maintenance costs out by property.  You would be surprised by the amount of property owners that own 5 to 20 properties and employ a third party to help keep their properties maintained but don't account for the different expenses per property.  Often times they use an accounting software program, i.e. Quick Books, and just have one line for maintenance expenses for their entire portfolio, but those programs have the capability to assign costs by property.  If you can avoid it do not co-mingle expenses between the properties.  Know which, if any, properties cost you more or less to maintain every year.  Most expenses in property management are fixed(at least for a year): insurance, mortgage, taxes, accounting, etc.  However, other than scheduled proactive maintenance problems do and will arise.  When they do they often cost you as a Landlord money.  Make sure to separate those expenses out by property.  The math of the expenses and your per-conceived notions about the separate properties may actually be off.  It is much harder to discover individual problems without the check and balances of detailed individual expense to lead you on the right track to lowering your overall costs.

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